Thomas Leigh Diary

Illustrator: Can't change size of brushes

One of keyboard shortcuts which I use most often while working with the Adobe Illustrator is for changing size of a brush. You should do that using right square bracket for increasing size of brush - and left square bracket for decreasing it. But sometimes it doesn't work without apparent reason. Although I've found potential solutions on the Web, in My case they didn't solve the problem: those particular keyboard shortcuts still remained not working.

It was an accident which succesfully helped Me (actually I believe it was My "Higher Self" :) ). I pressed something and as a result I was able to dynamically change size of the brush by moving mouse. Soon I discovered what "the magical combination" is:

You need to press and hold left ALT, then press and hold left mouse button - and then simply by moving mouse You should be able to change size of the brush (or other tool).

If You set size and shape of the brush as You wish, You can repeat the combination, adding pressed and held SHIFT key - in order to make changing size proportional.

Two important things about this solution:

1. It works even if the bracket shortcuts don't - so it can save Your day :) .
2. This way of changing size of brushes is infact more precise than the bracket shortcut (which works only by leaps).